Astronauts Take Spacewalk, Free Hatch

Published 7:00 pm, Tuesday, January 14, 2003

AP Aerospace Writer

Two astronauts, one of them a substitute for a medically disqualified cosmonaut, floated outside the international space station Wednesday for a bit of maintenance work.

Donald Pettit originally was supposed to monitor the spacewalk from inside. But in an unusual move, NASA yanked his Russian crew mate, Nikolai Budarin, from the job last month and bumped Pettit up to spacewalking status last week.

A sticky hatch delayed the spacewalk and added to the tension.

The space station's commander, Kenneth Bowersox, could not open the exit hatch at first. The handle seemed to jam, as though it was pushing against hard rubber.

"I'm not really making any progress here," he reported after about 20 minutes.

Pettit, a rookie astronaut, gave it a shot next. He pulled up on the hatch ever so slightly while turning the crank, and the hatch popped free.

"I have to do that to get the door of my pickup truck open sometime," Pettit said.

Pettit _ dubbed "Mister Magic Fingers" by Bowersox for his success with the hatch _ discovered that the outer thermal cover had a badly creased strap. Bowersox cut off the strap right before ending the seven-hour spacewalk to prevent the hatch mechanism from hanging up again.

The astronauts _ both first-time spacewalkers _ quickly completed their two main tasks outside, 250 miles up. They released locks on a recently installed radiator that was then extended to its full 75 feet in length. They also used tape to clean black grit from a docking ring; the sandy debris was carried up by a cargo carrier last year and apparently resulted from sandblasting at NASA's launch pad.

However, a protruding pin prevented them from erecting a light on a boom, which would not swing out of its stowed position.

Not only was Pettit a late substitute for this spacewalk, he was a late substitute for the flight itself. He was the backup for an astronaut who was pulled from the space station mission last summer because of doctors' concerns about radiation.

"He wasn't even supposed to fly, so I think he probably just continues to shake his head and wonders what's next," said Daryl Schuck, the spacewalk officer in Mission Control.

U.S. flight surgeons opposed a spacewalk by Budarin because of medical concerns. NASA would not elaborate, but Russian space officials said the 49-year-old cosmonaut had cardiovascular "peculiarities" that were well known and they insisted he was healthy enough to conduct a spacewalk.

NASA prevailed, however, because it was in charge of the spacewalk.

The astronauts called out to Budarin and thanked him for his help during the spacewalk. "It's very beautiful. We're doing what you did for eight times," Bowersox said, referring to Budarin's eight spacewalks at Russia's former space station Mir.

"Good luck. Be careful, my friends," Budarin replied.

The three men are about halfway through their four-month space station mission.

Earlier in the morning, flight controllers successfully moved a space station rail car to its proper parking location. The rail car, which is crucial to station construction, ended up in the wrong spot in November because of computer software trouble.

NASA waited until Wednesday to move the rail car in case the spacewalkers' help was needed.

Back at NASA's launch site, meanwhile, the countdown continued toward a Thursday liftoff of space shuttle Columbia on a science mission featuring Israel's first astronaut. Security is extraordinarily tight for the flight of Ilan Ramon, a colonel in the Israeli air force.

Columbia will not fly to the space station but rather circle the Earth solo for 16 days to provide weightlessness for a slew of scientific experiments.